Unfortunately, a couple of pro players cannot be the logical majority of the competitive scene. Getting paid to play and knowing what you're talking about are not mutually inclusive.

I'll risk sounding a bit fan-boyish here, but my observation is that Puppey seems to be one of the smartest captains in the scene. Every interview and such I've seen of him he's always seemed to know exactly what he is talking about (although he might not have been able to articulate his thoughts so well.) SyndereN has always come across as a fairly experienced player as well. And they're about the only 2 players that have ever impressed me in the fields of leadership and game sense.

You play in the top MMR bracket, right, so I don't know if it's US servers or what but my observation has always been that games get easier to beat when enemies build their Shadowblades and I seem to usually lose when my teammates start building them. I never flame anyone for anything they've done in-game, but it's just been my observation that Shadowblades usually don't seem to work if enemies aren't awful or have their heads up their ass. I know that was just an example, but like I've said before, when you're being criticized for any build the reason behind it might not always be just "omg dendi builds other way u noob."

I might disagree with talkdota consensus of Alchemist though, because I imagine there's a chance some team(s) figure out a way to abuse his ability to farm a full or almost full inventory really fast and opt for a mid-game 'timing' push lineup. Hit the enemy with Radiance AC BKB Vanguard Alchemist when the enemy AM is still sitting on BF and Manta. But then again the reality of Alchemist's inherent weaknesses might kick in and he'll just be forgotten when the initial shock fades and people will get comfortable playing against him.

I don't often see people properly use lothar's, myself. Mostly people will get it and completely neglect the free 150 damage nuke it brings, or will just use it as an escape tool and not use it to engage whatsoever. The typical shadowblade-Drow comes to mind here. However, take Alchemist as a great example. The windwalk puts him at near max movespeed to run up with his stun. If they have true sight you're still plenty fast enough to hit someone with it. If they don't, you get to walk all the way up to melee range and bash someone with a auto+150 hit to the face followed up by the awesome stun. The damage shadow blade ACTUALLY gives you then kicks in as you're wailing away at them during a full duration stun + acid.

Of course, it's not every day you get to 1v1 people like that. But Alchemist can farm this item in 15 minutes and he will have plenty of chances. And again, the difference between sold lothar's and blink is less than a gem, which means if they gem you can just sell it and buy blink and you have still won the gold trade with their team.

And if everyone agrees that Puppey really does know what he's talking about, I'll try to remember that =p

It's pretty hard for me to put into words without sounding, well, like an asshole. But, tournament games are not public games. They aren't even professional games. They're totally different because money is actually on the line. When professional players talk about game tweaks they usually do with tournaments in mind, "how will X change affect next week's Dreamhack(etc)." We can't take these opinions and apply them to the entire game, first of all. The pros don't even play tournament games when they're practicing for tournaments. Play with any professional player in public games and it becomes very obvious. Get into a game with 4 players from coL on the enemy team and win with your PuG. Is it because they were just screwing around? Well, kind of, but not really. They have nothing to lose so they relax a little, the attitude between these games and tournament games is pretty easy to spot in the way they play (at least for me). You just can't play completely seriously when losing doesn't actually cost you anything.

Second, with the previous in mind, let's remember that 99.9% of the games out there aren't even professional games. They aren't even good players screwing around and not being serious, they're average players who may also be screwing around. Game tweaks still matter for these people, while I agree that the game should be balanced around competitive play first, we can't ignore the vast majority of the rest of the community, either. The games pros play at tourneys are not the games we play in pubs. The games they play in tourneys aren't even the same as the games THEY play in pubs. To only keep in mind the cycle of a hundred games a year seems short sighted to me.

In the case for lothar's, I'll use a personal anecdote. I've used it to extreme effect on Leshrac - once. One game in the 1100 or something I've played of DotA2, and I don't really remember ever using it in DotA, so that number grows even more. Is it because it's a bad item for Leshrac? Not at all, it's an amazing item for him. So many other items are better in most games, though. Not because the items themselves are better, but because they are what he needs for those games. Lothar's is extremely situational, which brings me to my last point. I'm not trying to say I have all the answers and Puppey is retarded, that would be pretty foolish of me. But you won't see Na'vi buying it any time soon in a tournament. Simply because it is not safe to do so. Not because Lothar's is a bad item, but because it is so game dependant. One game in a hundred would you want it on Leshrac. Are you going to bet a million USD in prize money on this game being that one in a hundred? Of course not.

There are still heroes I buy it consistently on. Even the heroes I buy it the most commonly on I only get it around half the time. That's still a lot of windwalking, and I can't recall a game where it hasn't been useful. What I wish to inspire is the realization in the community that we are not pros in tournament games. Most of the time, the pros are not even pros in tournament games. Our strategies do not and, even more, should not revolve around what happens in tournaments. Wisp/tiny was very strong in TI2 I am told, a week after it was used I laned against wisp/tiny. Was it annoying? Yes. Did I completely stomp them anyway? Of course, they did not have the coordination with the rest of their team to make it a viable combo and Wisp was feeding pretty early into the game, unable to keep Tiny alive anymore, either.

My discussions aren't about this or that hero, or how great lothar's is. I don't care if you think it's a horrible item, that's fine. And it is, in many games. Going orchid on Juggernaut is horrible for many games. But it worked against Storm that one time. And that's what matters, picking the right strategy for THIS game. People should treat each game as a new experience with a new strategy, not some formula they can look up on elitistjerks and plug in to top the DPS meters.

This got a lot longer than I wanted. Unfortunately, I can't just say "please start thinking for yourself" without coming off incredibly condescending, so I have to explain it. I know how easy it is to think that the top players can be undisputed resources. Truly, their insight is very valuable. I would certainly tell most players to listen to Puppey before they listen to me, I'm sure he spends a lot longer thinking about this stuff than I do. And you can believe that I spend way too much of my time thinking about DotA, but that's not the point here. No one knows you or your skill bracket better than you do. Will dagon Axe win 90% of the games you play in your bracket? If so, great! Buy it 90% of the time! Who cares if pros think it's stupid? You're winning and THAT is what matters.

(Disclaimer: Winning does not even matter. It's all about fun, even if we forget sometimes (all the time)).

Thanks for reading if you did =p I hope I kind of made some sense with all the rambling.

^^To shorten: when there's million bucks on the line, you don't screw around, you go for tried and tested (albeit boring because they're seen so much) tactics:P

I've been using lothar's a lot lately (since blink or windwalk on SF discussion), and it's extremely well rounded item, giving small nuke and escape skill in one slot for not too great cost. Almost all heroes can benefit from it, and it won't be really countered in public (generally low-coordinated) games.

Regarding huge changelog, i've come to conclusion that devs maybe want to shake metagame a lot, i haven't watched lot of pro games lately, but i had a feeling it's been stagnant for a while.some of buffed heroes haven't been changed quite a while, and they were less viable because they weren't evolving with the map. Couple of small buffs can easily bring neglected hero in the spotlight. For example, back in 6.3x days, Leshrac had 14 starting str and was considered mid-low pick, his str was buffed to 16 and he became one of standard competitive picks after, simply because perception of him changed, not because of 2 more starting strength.

I'm trying to avoid talking about SF with lothar's, his situation is pretty unique =p

It seems like the change to SF is really gonna make it so that buying Lothar's on him is never really a bad idea. Even if they counter it, hell, you still explode when you die so whatever. I'm interested to see how a high-level player will handle SF now, it's like you need to balance suiciding to wipe their team with realizing you're gonna have to spend a few minutes recovering lost souls when you respawn.

Yes, I'd agree that competitive games can only exist in, well, competitive environment. You could look at Team Zenith in TI2. In June-July they'd do really well in small tournaments and according to themselves they won most of the big Chinese teams when practising against them, and they entered TI2 with a lot of banter and confidence. They didn't exactly do great in group stages and finished 5th, and all of them seemed to be extremely disappointed, even (in my opinion) 5th place was about the best they could hope for with their performance compared to the top 4. They may have expected to possess superior skill and strategy, but their thoughts of invincibility faded quickly when their enemies started playing to win.

When Na´Vi were the dominant team, people would criticize Puppey for "trolling" whenever he did non-standard drafting and when he was in interviews people would think that his manner of giving straight answers to questions reflected arrogance. But again in TI2, his pre-game and post-game interviews were some of the most insightful ones (at least compared to the awfully translated Chinese ones) and prior to playing iG and LGD in Winner's Bracket he reflected that he didn't think there was any way they could win the Chinese by playing in a "normal" way. Then they did some unusual banning and beat iG with Juggernaut and LGD with Faceless Void. When the finals turned to partially be a duel between Dendis Rubick and ChuaNs Tide, Puppey grasped at Nyx as a last straw in the very final game. A lot of people thought of it as a "good idea", but a few months earlier many of the same people would probably have thought of it as "trolling."

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 12:08 AM ----------

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK

It seems like the change to SF is really gonna make it so that buying Lothar's on him is never really a bad idea. Even if they counter it, hell, you still explode when you die so whatever. I'm interested to see how a high-level player will handle SF now, it's like you need to balance suiciding to wipe their team with realizing you're gonna have to spend a few minutes recovering lost souls when you respawn.

Hah, imagine a Bloodstone SF. That'd be cute.

You're overestimating SF's jihad. It's his ultimate with half the souls, so unless your enemy clump up on you when they kill you (hint: they won't) it usually won't do enough for you to feel good about dying. A well positioned ranged hero could get hit with just one single soul, 80/120/160 damage, a melee or a very unlucky hero for 2-3 souls. Not that much to feel great about having just died on SF.

About SB on SF, the problem is that later on in the game it's a very risky item to use in initiation. Even when someone else initiates and you have BKB, trying to sneak into enemy team pretty is bold as one Sentry and once CC can easily mean your death. And even if you can BB you're still some souls short.

I'd say that Shadowblade isn't an awful item if it can be used as something else than just "farm anywhere and escape with invis" -card, but most of the other uses are usually more or less gambling.

Naix cant handle a lot of the hard camp spawns, I think pretty much only cetaur is doable from lvl 1. You can't really stack to offset that either like with DS or axe and he doesn't kill particularly fast.

He can take Centaurs, Golems and Satyrs pretty much straight up at level 2 without any issue. You can stack a large camp three-four times (while jungling normally) and then kill it with ease once you hit level six with a stout shield.

Originally Posted by JimPaladin

This game really needs region locks, and from the amount of players demanding it, it'll probably get them sooner or later. Let's hope it's sooner, in this case.

Fair enough. People do copy way too much, as well as believing everything donwe in tournaments will also work in their pubgames.

See this happen all the time. Someone will get Rubick in SD or RD and try to build him like Dendi does and they pretty much feed all game because they don't realize Dendi can get away with the glass cannon build he uses (i.e., not a bit of STR or HP anywhere) because Na'Vi have the coordination and timing necessary to prevent the enemy team from sitting on Rubick.

Did several different Doomy builds for jungling and I can definitely say it looks like it's viable now, but I was pretty reliant on stacking the pull camp to get to level 2... Doomy just can't tank monsters until he gets some more armor, not even the little camps. So warding the pull or interrupting it would probably delay him quite a lot.

I also ended up with an extra ring of protection laying around since you need both tranquil boots and ring of basilius. But the positive is that at 25 minutes I had Radiance, Hand of Midas, Ring of Basilius, Phase Boots, Quelling Blade, and Armlet and was level 16 without ever leaving the jungle. I think in a real game it'd be time to leave the jungle after finishing Radiance (18-20 mins) and would probably start ganking around level 6 (potentially before that if I ate a troll.)

---------- Post added 2012-10-06 at 04:48 AM ----------

Do visage's familiars need some tweaks? Seems like they require a lot more APM to use effectively than other summons, for less overall gain. The stun's great but they're worth a trainload of gold and their DPS is garbage.

LOL tends to use the term burden of knowledge. Now i don't play LOL so I know only vaguely what that means. My friends who hates LOL beyond everything was saying that something like that will never ever be implemented in Dota or DOTA2.

Now here is my problem....is the recommended item list in DOTA2 something that functions in the same way. I remember in Dota that people tended to go their own builds and experiment almost all the time at least in pubs be it garena,wc3 or newer private leagues. However in DOTA2 80% of item builds are recommended item builds and people tend to,when i ask them why they are going that specific item, be somewhat clueless why it complements their hero.

VS can't carry, but it doesn't mean she can't do damage. Being the wards/mek bitch is for other heroes. Give real items on VS a try sometime, you'd be surprised how early in the game she can start globaling people before MM stun wears off.

Basically, my point here is, the recommended items are great for average players in average games. There might be 90 different ways to play a given hero, but the main 1 is enough for most people. People will follow the recommended items because they don't really understand how the game works and see it more mathematical like LoL is.

She's excellent ganker, due to stun also a very good laner, and considering in pubs your teammates aren't the most reliable bunch it's usually better to focus on damage because there's high chance that your "carry" will be feeding all game, so you could as well to make yourself useful. Supports need teamwork, which is rare.